“You had breakfast?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, that smile still lighting her pretty brown eyes.
“Then let’s go celebrate a book launch.”
25
Henri
Wow.
I had sex. With Luca. And it was fun, and it was good—so good—and I want to do it again, and I also want to ask him to marry me.
But I am not going to ask him to marry me.
This was my next test. The logical next step in my training to learn to not ducking fall in love.
And yes, I mean ducking, because I’ve already used up my quotient of the other word for the week, and—
No.
You know what?
Fuck it.
That’s right.
Fuck it.
Elsa might think that a person shouldn’t use the fuck word, but that doesn’t mean that I, Henrietta Leonora Bacon, have to follow her rules too.
I write books.
Words are tools. And if I want to use the fuck word, I will use the fuck word.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, but please stop,” Luca says over omelets at a greasy spoon down the road from the hotel, where we’re having a peaceful breakfast away from all of his family while they work out their own problems. “Whatever it is, it’s not worth hyperventilating over.”
I square my shoulders, look him in the eye—which is hard when I all want to do is stare at his rainbow hair—and let it all come out.
Kind of. “I was thinking I should say fuck more often.”
A woman at the next table gasps and covers her toddler’s ears, and I wince. “Sorry,” I whisper to her.
She glares at me.
Luca coughs behind his orange juice.
Gah, he’s so handsome when his eyes crinkle like that.
“Maybe we save you saying that lovely word for the next time we’re alone,” he whispers, and I swear he’s whispering at exactly the right decibel level for the lady with the toddler to hear, and I know he’s putting that seductive quality in his voice for the benefit of every woman with ovaries who likes to spontaneously have orgasms in public to enjoy with their eggs and hash browns this morning.
I fan my face.
He grabs his phone, which he’s been checking obsessively since we ordered our food. I bat at it. “Put that away.”
“Nora Dawn has outdone herself. I never thought I could love another vampire as much as I love Confucius, but Adonis is my new book boyfriend forever and ever with beet sauce on top.”
My cheeks go up in flames and I have to grab my shirt and fan my own armpits with it, because hearing the good reviews always makes me sweat.
“They’re saying that because—”
“Because you’re smart and talented and funny and people like your books,” he interrupts. “Say it with me, Henri. I am smart. I am funny. I have jam on my cheek.”
“Ohmygosh, I’m wearing my jam?”
He licks his thumb, reaches across the chipped Formica table and swipes it over my cheek. “Not anymore. Now, the other two parts. I am smart. I am funny…”
“I know I’m smart and funny. I just don’t know if I’m…”
He lifts a brow, and I realize his brows are still that lovely shade of chestnut rather than rainbow-colored like his hair.
“Never mind.” I dig back into my omelet, because no good will come of telling Luca that I don’t know if I’m lovable.
He’ll either tell me I am, or he won’t, and neither will fix the fact that I need to get over liking him.
He’s not my forever.
I snort softly to myself, because no man is my forever.
Luca’s not eating when I glance up again.
No, he’s staring at me like I’m a puzzle and he’s going to find my missing piece.
It’s you, Luca Rossi. You’re my missing piece.
The thought makes me drop my fork, and dozens of eyeballs turn to stare at us as my fork clatters not once, but four times as I try to grab it—and miss—over and over again until I almost knock over my tea mug too.
“I should hurry up,” I blurt. “I haven’t spent much time in Boston, and you probably need to get to the ballpark, and I can explore the city. It’s a good thing to do to distract me on release day. Otherwise I’ll obsess over reviews and charts and all kinds of things that I don’t need to obsess about. Oh! And I should see if I can get a ticket to the game, since I’m here. Unless you want me to go back to Copper Valley. I can catch a flight home. It’s no problem. I’ll—”
“Henri.”
I can’t look at him as I mumble, “Yes?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and when I finally look up at him, he’s frowning.
Of course he is.
I’m annoying. I talk too much. I’m not pretty like Mackenzie or Tanesha or Marisol—I’m plain, lumpy, weird-haired, boring-eyed Henri with a job that isn’t even a real job.
But I guess being a baseball player isn’t a real job either, is it?
I kinda doubt my family would judge Luca for that though.
“What do you want?” he finally asks.
You. “Ohmygosh, I forgot to feed Dogzilla.”
Yeah.
I’m a big ol’ chicken.
But this isn’t about avoiding Luca. Not entirely.
It’s also about avoiding myself.
26
Henri
The next several days are weird. I fly home from Boston with the team, including Nonna, but not including Luca’s parents.
His dad apparently left town not long after I ran into him in the lobby. I didn’t think I’ll put you in a book and make you a deadbeat vampire dad too was a real threat, so it’s likely Nonna or Morgan were responsible for him leaving, but I still feel like I did my part.
Especially since I doubt either one of them added it’s never too late to have a real relationship with someone, but only if you’re planning on giving more than you receive, because that’s what you owe a child you’ve disappointed for this many years.
Maybe I shouldn’t have meddled, but considering Luca has lots of pictures of his mom and his nonna and his aunts and uncles and cousins with him in that box I found in the basement when I was looking for duct tape, but none of him with his father, I don’t think I got it wrong.
Luca and I go back to sleeping in the same bed with our backs to each other and occasionally making noises like we’re having sex, while not touching, though there’s a layer of awkward that wasn’t there before Boston, and I don’t know how to get rid of it.
Possibly breaking up with him would work, except that thought makes my heart do that thing where it feels like I’m on an out-of-control roller coaster and one of those little hills takes me by surprise when we go over it too fast.
I don’t want to break up with Luca.
I’m not ready for that.
During the day when I’m not hiding in his basement writing and he’s not at the ballpark, we’ve had some fascinating discussions where neither of us touch the flaming elephantasaurus in the room that is this weird tension between us.
For instance, I’ve learned that he likes to jog through the zoo a few days a week during the off-season to get his animal fix, and that he’s always wanted pets but feels like it’s unfair to them given how much he travels. He spends a few hours a week helping out at food pantries or animal shelters or visiting with kids at the children’s hospital. If he can’t sleep, he’ll binge watch Sherlock. He’s three classes shy of a degree, because he took classes during the winter when he was in the minors but couldn’t decide what he wanted to major in, since he knew he wanted the big league paycheck and needed to put his primary emphasis on continuously improving his body until it was in major-league shape.